


Gimme Shelter

by Anaross



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Amnesia, F/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-15 11:39:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3445769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anaross/pseuds/Anaross
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Giles is in London running the Slayer, Inc., and has bunches of teenaged girls defying his every command. One of them has a strange report that leads him to investigate a demon club downtown where he finds a long-dead acquaintance singing with the band.</p><p>Set 16 months after Not Fade Away. </p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story isn't exactly finished, and I don't know if it ever will be.

Rupert Giles paused at the club door, his eyes closed—a dangerous vanity, here in a cold, foggy Soho alley. It was a Jack-the-Ripper sort of alley, just steps from a major road, but as dark as any Sunnydale cemetery. He shouldn't close his eyes, shouldn't let down his guard.

But he knew that song—well, everyone did, this was London, and that was the Stones. And he knew that voice.

He plunged his hand into his jacket pocket and grabbed the stake, his fingers sliding over the bumps in the wood, skirting the splinters. But no matter how he concentrated, he still heard it—the voice now, and the same voice years ago, in an unusually actionless cemetery….

"In sleepy Sunnydale—" and back then, Xander's voice joined in, the two of them singing together in unprecedented amiability—"there's just no place for… a streetfighting man."

Same song now, only about Londontown, that way it was meant to be sung. In sleepy Londontown, there's just no place for a street-fighting man…..

He opened his eyes and focused on the blackboard sign hung beside the door, on the red letters, on the fake (they looked fake) drips of blood. The Bleeding Rocks—an Homage to the Stones.

Rupert Giles had never been a coward. He took a breath and walked into the dark club.

  
  


It was Spike, of course, up there on the stage, in the tight red t-shirt and the skinny jeans that Mick Jagger used to wear. Longer hair than Giles remembered, not nearly so blonde. A backup band of motley half-demons. A jostling audience—demon, half-demon, human-- with hands raised and bums bouncing. 

A Stones homage band. Well. He would have expected more of Spike, who for all his faults had impeccable taste in whisky and in music. 

He spied two of the older slayers in the crowd, and they spied him spying them and hastily peeled away and out the door. He made a mental note to deal with them tomorrow. For now, he had to deal with-- Spike.

He pushed his way to the front, so close he could smell the beer spilled on the stage. Spike was stomping now-- jumping jack flash it's a gas gas gas….

But Spike's gaze passed over him, and past him, onto a girl pulling her shirt up and off. The gaze lingered there, on the girl's sports bra, then came back, sweeping the crowd—sweeping over Giles, as if he didn't even know him.

Hmmm. Giles pushed back through the crowd and went to order a pint. He leaned there, one elbow on the bar, and watched the stage. Spike. Well. Yes. Broken eyebrow, lethal smirk, and all.

What am I to tell Buffy, he thought, and thought better of it. 

He escaped with everyone else at closing time—just two minutes after the law required—but took a hard right into the dark alleyway and waited by the door. He was rewarded, if that was the right term, when a shaft of light emerged and after it Spike's slim figure. Spike went to the dumpster and tossed in a rubbish sack which clanged with discarded bottles. He paused there, just long enough to pull something out of his pocket. A match flared, and for just a second Giles saw that soft mouth closing around a hand-rolled smoke-- 

The no-longer golden head turned. "You want a bit, mate?"

Giles shoved away from the brick wall. It was Spike. Of course he sensed another in the alley. Stiffly, Giles said, "If by a bit, you mean a hit, yes." 

The vampire laughed and stretched out his hand. "What did you think I meant?"

It had been rather a long time since Giles indulged in this particular vice, and either his tolerance had decreased or marijuana's potency had increased. He was dizzy with one toke. But at least the muscles responded, and the throat didn't close up, and he didn't embarrass himself by coughing. He exhaled the smoke and said politely, "Good shit."

"Yeah," Spike said, accepting the joint back. "So, Watcher, what is it you want?"

Carefully, his hand on the stake, Giles said, "You know me?" 

Spike shrugged. "Wouldn't be much of a vampire, would I, if I didn't sense a watcher in the crowd."

Noncommittal. No admission of recognition. It could just be Spike being cagey—although Spike and subterfuge never really connected. It was one of the things he had in common with Buffy. They both sucked at anything undercover, Giles thought. Straight at 'em, no maneuvers, that was their strategy. 

He leaned back against the wall and studied the other man, who was taking one last toke before stubbing out the joint and aiming it unerringly at the dumpster. 

No. If Spike had any memory of Giles at all, he'd remember Buffy—and he would have asked about her first thing. 

"The Stones, eh?" Giles said. "I would have figured you more for the Sex Pistols type."

Still no reaction, or none of note. "We do a punk homage too. Every Thursday. Come by. Bring your friends. And a few more of your slayers."

Giles ignore that last request. "This is your club?" At Spike's nod, Giles continued, "How long have you owned it?"

"A year or so."

There were rather too many questions—how Spike had wound up here, why he could recognize watchers and slayers in general, but not Giles in particular, and perhaps most curiously, how he could afford a pub in central London, the Spike who once had to steal cigarettes and Giles's best whisky. But Spike was getting skittish, his hand on the door. Giles said quickly, just to delay him, "Good location."

"Good enough. We get mostly tourists, demons on holiday, a few regulars who live underground of the Underground. Piccadilly's the middle of demontown, you know. "

The watcher in Giles wanted more intel on this oft-rumored but never-located demontown. But he hadn't the time; Spike was pulling open the door. "You seem to attract more than a few humans too, I presume already in the know—"

Spike paused with the door half-open, the kitchen light and warmth spilling out into the chill alley. "You won't punish those slayer-girls, will you? They're just scouting the territory, like good little slayers. No harm. They deserve a spot of fun of an evening. And I've got dampers all over the building, so there's no mayhem, no more than usual beer bottles tossed at the stage. Everyone's a music critic, you know."

The door almost closed behind him, but Giles pushed through into the empty kitchen. It smelled of oregano and garlic, he noted distractedly. An Italian cook—or a recent pizza delivery. More evidence that Spike told the truth all those times he laughed at the notion of a garlic vampire-bane. He followed through the swinging door to the now-silent bar. "Another word with you?"

Spike hesitated with his fist around a bottle of Laphroaig. "Quitting time, mate. I DVR'd the Man U match. Thought I'd –"

"They lost," Giles said flatly.

Spike gave him a sharp look. "Now that's cruel, watcher. Spoilin' my fun like that."

"I'll buy that bottle from you."

Spike didn't move away from the bar. "You could get it for half my price, down at the local takeaway."

"I doubt the local takeaway has Laphroaig." Giles took from his wallet two fifty-pound notes. Then he withdrew the stake from his pocket and laid it with the notes on the long teak bar. "Set up the glasses, Mr. Publican, and join me for a round."

Spike's gaze rested on the stake, then finally he shrugged and got down two glasses. "My pleasure, watcher. Just tell me where you got that stake, and I'll pour with a generous hand."

Giles only picked up the stake and held it up in the lamp-glow, spotlighting the bloodstains on the sharp end. Spike gestured his annoyance, but went ahead and poured the whisky, and they tapped glasses and drank deep before Giles said, "The stake was brought to me this morning, blood and all, by one of my slayers."

Spike nodded. "Met up with her last night, out there in the alley."

"She was sure she'd hit you true. She didn't understand why you didn't dust." I should have known, he almost said, that it was you—the irrepressible, undustable Spike. They'd all tried hard enough, back in the day. 

But he didn't say it. He was certain now that Spike didn't remember him, and thought it best first to find out why. "She must have missed your heart."

Spike put down his glass and slowly, very slowly, pulled up his red shirt. Underneath, the skin on his chest shone ivory and pure, except for the jagged, half-healed tear an inch to the left of center. "You tell me, watcher. You think she missed?"

Giles stared at the cut, placed precisely where it should have been, and deep enough that it hadn't healed in a full day. "I don't know. You're—I see you are left-handed. Perhaps your heart's on the other side."

"It's right where it ought to be. You tell her that. She did all right."

"Is that why," Giles said, "you let her strike you? And then let her go?"

Without haste, Spike recapped the bottle and set his glass in the bar sink. He took his time buttoning up his shirt. "Take your whisky and go home, watcher. The door'll lock behind you."

And he sauntered out of the room in that too-memorable Spike walk. Giles heard him mount some inner stairs to what he assumed was an upper flat. Still he sat at the bar, nursing his drink, listening to the faint footsteps of the man above—the vampire above. The one, by all accounts, dead (yet again) sixteen months ago, in a final LA battle. The vampire redux. Still a vampire. Still pale and fast-healing. Still drinking—to judge from the test of the blood on the stake—animal blood exclusively.

But now… now impervious to the stake.


	2. Chapter 2

Two weeks later--

 

What were the odds.  Who should she run into at Heathrow but Faith, returning from Indonesia and the infestation of Rapidos.  So once they cleared Customs, they had to share a cab to Watcher HQ... Oh.  Right. Slayer HQ.

Slayers outnumbered watchers these days, after she'd activated all those slayers, so they'd renamed the rebuilt Russell Square headquarters Slayer HQ.  But she and Faith, Buffy sometimes thought, were the only real slayers, the ones created by the slayer line and not by the Axecalibur.

Buffy glanced over at Faith, whose face turned red and blue depending on the neon sign they were passing. 

She and Faith ought to be friends. But they weren't.

Buffy wasn't friends with anyone. Oh, Willow and Xander, of course. But they were both off in their own worlds now, nothing but an occasional email from Xander and a monthly phone call from Willow (she'd always been so organized-- she actually scheduled the call on her Palm Pilot).

Stop with the self pity, Buffy told herself, and even asked a few friendly questions about Faith's trip. 

She'd been gone so long herself-- two months scouting hellmouths in Canada (none of them very impressive, but maybe Buffy was hard to please when it came to hellmouths)-- that London and Russell Square and Faith and .... and her life, her supposed current life, felt alien to her.  None of this matters, she started to think, then cut the thought short.

Of course it mattered. It had to matter.  Something had to matter.

Didn't things used to matter? Didn't everything used to matter?

Didn't she used to matter?

  
  


They found Slayer HQ abandoned. Well, there was the usual clueless guard at the door, or maybe he wasn't clueless so much as ridiculously discreet, pretending he'd never heard of them.  He did let them in, however, after closely perusing their ID, and Buffy sighed as she lugged her bags over the threshold and dropped them in the high-ceilinged hall.  She kept a room here, up in the hidden wing, and now she tried to remember where it was and what it looked like.

Faith was already at the desk, smiling at some message left in her pigeonhole.

"Where is everyone?" Buffy said to no one in particular.

"At a club," Faith replied, still reading her note. Then she glanced up. "Rona left me a note.  She says she meant to pick me up at the airport, but she couldn't get a car."

No one, not even Giles or her very own sister, Buffy thought sourly, offered to pick her  up.  "So she's at a club?"

"Everyone is, I guess," Faith said, still distracted, still smiling over whatever Rona had written.

Faith, now Faith had friends.  Buffy didn't really understand it. She thought maybe she'd lost any real understanding of personal relationships.  How did you make friends? How did you fall in love? How did you go on loving once you were lovers? She just didn't know anymore. She probably didn't used to know either, but at least in the past, she'd done it all without thinking. Now she couldn't find the instinct everyone else seemed to have.  It was weird. She used to be popular even. Effortlessly popular. Now whenever she dealt with other people, she was feeling her way through the dark, touching objects she didn't recognize.  It could be an old teddy bear, or it could be a demon. She just didn't know anymore. 

She tried to imagine what Dawn would say. Dawn was impulsive and always said what was on her mind. And she'd say... Oh. Right. She'd say, "What kind of club is it?" 

So she said that. 

Faith looked up from the note. "She says it's a demon club. Cool, huh?"

Buffy had a brief memory flash of the late, unlamented Willie's. That was the only demon club she'd frequented, and it was usually when she was looking for-- 

Well. What would Dawn say?  "A demon club?  So what's so great about it?"

"She says it's fun. Music. Piccadilly. Dancing. And, you know, slayer-safe. " 

"Safe," Buffy echoed. "Maybe-- " it seemed unlikely, but she could imagine Dawn saying this, because Dawn was sort of idealistic lately, and naively believed in the commanality of all species (she'd even become a vegan)-- "Maybe they're harmless demons."

"No such thing," Faith said, because she was anything but naive.  "Anyway, Rona said I should come on over." 

Buffy felt a little pain in her heart.  But it was just a little pain. She didn't feel big pains anymore. She thought maybe it was like this after you had your appendix removed.  You might get a stomach-ache now and again, but nothing that would kill you. "Sounds like fun."

She didn't mean to angle for an invitation, but Faith took it that way. "Hey! You come too!" 

Buffy shook her head. "I'm jet-lagging, and I'm not dressed right, and--"

Faith bounded up the stairs, calling back, "C'mon.  Change and meet me back here.  We'll dance, maybe pick up some guys.  You know, some good-looking demons." 

"No such thing," Buffy said, but Faith was already gone. And it wasn't true anyway. There were some good-looking demons. Mostly vampires, who were really mostly human, but--

But she wasn't going to think about that. 

She just meant to shower and go to bed, but she'd only gotten done with the shower part when Faith knocked. "Come on, come on, let's go!" she called through the door, and Buffy reminded herself that she wanted to get out more, wanted to relearn the whole fun thing, the whole friend thing.  So she pulled on a pair of jeans and a tight top and took a big breath and opened the door.

Faith was dressed to the nines, of course, all sex and spangles, and Buffy felt like the poor stepsister for a few seconds.  Then she shook it off.  She didn't want to attract a guy anyway. She just wanted to have a drink or two, listen to the music, maybe quiz a slayerette about Giles's whereabouts.... "Ready," she said, and followed Faith out the door into the misty night.

 

Buffy let Faith be the battering ram, shoving through the crowd to the bar, ordering the appletinis.  She was sleepy, ready for bed, ready to fall asleep on her feet despite the pounding bass beat.  She forced her eyes open, forced herself to survey her surroundings. Demon bar, remember? Darkness, danger, tension, violence, sweat, lust-- well, her senses were on alert, but without much cause. There were demons around her, yes, pressing close in the crowd, but they were all facing the stage, bobbing up and down right next to the humans (several slayerettes among them, no sign of Rona yet). No violence. 

A bit disappointed, Buffy rose up on her tiptoes, trying to make out the figures of the band in the strobe lit stage area beyond the tables and the standing-room-only dancefloor.  In her next life, she thought, she was going to be tall.  In her next life, she'd be on the basketball team.  In her next life—

She wondered if she'd have a next life.  Or maybe this was already her next life.   

That would really be disappointing.

She closed her eyes and gave in.  To the beat, to the crowd, to the noise. To the moment.  Carpe diem. Carpe demon.  Carpe— 

Now, with her eyes closed, she could hear the singing over the buzz of the crowd.  The song sounded familiar-- the voice teasing at her memory.

_And you touch the distant beaches with tales of brave Ulysses:  
How his naked ears were tortured by the sirens sweetly singing._

Her eyes flew open, and she shoved up to Faith's side.  "Hoist me up," she yelled in Faith's ear. 

Faith gave a quizzical look, but shrugged and put a hand on either side of Buffy's waist and hefted her up a couple feet. 

Now she could see over the horns of the Groflox, and the sight of the stage proved her suspicion correct.  A motley group of demons were playing guitars at the back of the stage, hidden by darkness and amplifiers.  But she could see the singer up there, spotlighted at the microphone, his gray t-shirt artistically ripped on one side, his eyes hidden by black and silver shades, his hair tufting over his forehead—

"Giles," Faith breathed, as if she'd just recognized the voice.  She dropped Buffy to the ground. "My turn! This I gotta see." 

Automatically, Buffy lifted her up, her fingers pressing against the hot bare skin under the crop top.  Giles. Singing. In a demon club.  In a torn t-shirt.

The world was coming to an end.

Again.  

I can deal with this, she told herself. I've dealt with worse. My mother and he—

That was way worse than Giles doing his Joey Ramone thing here. Now. In front of all those demons, not to mention the impressionable slayerettes. 

Bad, okay. But not near as bad as her mom and-- .  (Almost as bad.)

She felt claws at her waist, and instinctively tensed.  She was about to drop Faith and start with the slaying, but something stopped her, fuzzing her movements and slowing her reaction.  Dampers, she realized.  That was why the club was "safe"— mystical violence dampers.  She wanted to struggle, but  she was already in the air, her feet dangling, her head just high enough to clear the crowd. "Can yuh see now?" said a gravelly voice behind her. 

"Yeah," she replied, gulping down her frustration. And then, as civilly as she could—dampers or no, this was still a demon laying hands on her—"Thanks."

The music crashed to a halt, and Giles thrust the microphone stand away and then caught it in one hand.  Buffy laid her head against Faith's back and groaned.  

"You can let us go now," she told the demon politely, and slid down to the floor, and let Faith go.

"Wow," Faith yelled. "Can you believe it? Giles? Did you see his shirt was held together with safety pins?  Awesome!" 

"Awesome," Buffy echoed.  Her head hurt. She wanted to go home.

(Home was a pile of rubble in a desert crater--) 

Giles wasn't leaving the stage.  He was actually introducing the band, like it was his band and not some glorified karaoke-enabler.  He sounded drunk, Giles-drunk, which meant that there was not the slightest slur—his pronunciation was more precise than ever.  (What was he doing here? What was she doing here?)  She grabbed Faith's waistband and started to yell something about getting a cab and—

And then Giles said, irony beading his voice, "And of course, at bass is our very own host—" 

She let go of Faith and started to shove through the crowd towards the door.  This wasn't her place, even if it had become Giles's.  Music and noise and hot bodies – demons and slayers, darkness and flashes of light.  All too much—

Giles was finally finishing his florid and false intro—"This establishment's proprietor, the one, the only, the inimitable, the invincible--"  
   
And then Faith was grabbing at her wrist, spinning her around, face frantic, mouth going, no competition for the sudden approving roar of the crowd.  Buffy read the words off her lips--  _It's—_  
   
"Spike," Giles said, and Faith let go of her hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all I've got, so far.


	3. Chapter 3

She was crazy to see him. Crazy. The need clawed through her and grabbed at her throat, and she couldn't even say it. I need to see him, she would say if she could speak.  But Faith was holding her again, and Rona too, the two of them hard and hot around her, and she couldn't see past them, or over the broad back of the psephlic in front of her. I need to see him. Spike. I need to—

But Faith was yelling in her ear. Rona says—

Rona says—

And Rona was yelling too. He doesn't remember. He doesn't remember anything. Giles says—

Giles, Buffy croaked out. Giles would know. Giles knew. Giles knew and didn't--

Giles is leaving, Rona yelled, and Buffy saw him now at the side of the crowd, stalking out through the kitchen door like he owned the place and was going in there to fire the chef.

"Giles knew," she said clearly, and Rona gathered her in for a fierce hug, and Faith, well, in the two minutes since Giles had said that name—that name—Faith had somehow gotten every bit of intel and was leaning close to share it.

"He's back. He's okay. But he doesn't remember Sunnydale, Giles says," Faith said, though she couldn’t have exchanced word one with Giles. She must have heard all this from Rona in that crazy moment when Buffy couldn't think of anything but how she wanted to see him.  "He doesn't know and Giles says it's best that way."

I still want to see him, she whispered into Rona's hot neck. "Let me go," she ordered, and Rona let her go—releasing one arm and then the other, and then backing off a step, backing up right into the psephlic demon, who said, "Hey, now, little lady."

There was such a crowd, jostling and solid, and those damn dampers had slowed her Slayer skills, and she couldn't get more than a few steps. 

"Come on," Faith said, and took her arm.

Then she heard him. That voice. That rich, amused voice. Of Spike. 

"Need some ladies. Some slayers. Got a song for you!"

And the crowd parted, and slayers rushed forward—girls she knew from Sunnydale, girls she'd met since, and a couple she didn't recognize. "Come on!" Faith cried, her face filling with excitement now.

And so she followed them all to the front, where they parted to let Faith and her—the Chosen Ones—clamber first up the stage steps.

He was there. It was him. She knew it. She felt it. She raised her head and looked straight at him, and he grinned and made a courtly bow, and held out his hands, one for each of them. And he smiled—first at her, and then, more fully, at Faith. His hand was cool and firm over hers. She remembered that feeling.

He didn't.

"Ah," he said, over the whining of the rhythm guitar. "The real thing, are you."

And Faith tossed her head, and said, "Takes one to know one," and he laughed like that was the wittiest riposte ever.

He didn't know her. It was true. He knew she – and Faith—were special. He could tell that much. But that was all he knew. He didn't know Buffy and he didn't know their past and he didn't know—he didn't know he loved her.

He still did. She knew it, even if he didn't.

He looked the same. Oh, not the same. Longer hair, darker now. No. That was the only difference. That and that easy politeness in his eyes as he looked at her.

For a second. And a second more. Then he turned again to Faith, and gave her another type of look.

Buffy knew that look. It was HER look. She was about to grab him and tell him to quit looking at anyone else that way, even – especially—Faith, but the band had lurched into an opening riff, and the slayerettes were massing behind them, and Spike had grabbed the microphone.  "Sure," he said, "the Stones have Jagger. But even Jagger doesn't have…" he gestured around him—"The Slayer Chorus!"

Then he grabbed the mike and leaned forward and sang, very soft, "Oh, the storm is threatening…"

Buffy felt it again, that weird disconnect. This wasn't her life, was it. She didn't know what to do. He was there and he was the only thing in her life that had ever made any sense—and he didn't know her. And that made no sense.

The other slayers were swaying behind them, and so she swayed too, and they were singing "ooh-ooh," so she did too, low, because she didn't like her singing voice.  And then one slayer belted out, "It's just—" and stepped forward. Rona, with that powerful booming voice of her, stepped forward to the mike and sang with Spike. And he knew she'd do that. She'd done it before. She knew. Giles knew. And no one told her—

But the song was going on and she couldn't stop everything just to cry or grab Rona's braids and yank or grab Spike and—

"War, slayers, it's just a shot away. War, demons, it's just a shot away."

He sang that, and the demons and slayers all sang along, old warriors, new warriors, but warriors without much of a war. Just the song—

Everyone was dancing. But Faith—somehow Faith was dancing not in the line with the rest of them, not even with Rona up by the microphone. She was dancing with Spike, as Rona's voice dropped to a whisper, "Tell you, sister, it's just a kiss away. It's just a kiss away. Kiss away. Kiss away."

Faith and Spike, and Buffy couldn't stand it.  She strode forward and shoved Faith out of the way and took her place, growling, "Mine," and looking up into Spike's glowing gold-blue eyes.

Faith just stood there, and then said, "Yeah. Okay. Yours," and stepped back into the chorus. 

Spike was laughing too much to take the mike from Rona, and she had to sing the last refrain by herself. He was used to this. Used to women—slayers—fighting over him.

Well, no more. They were going to know, and he was going to know, that there was only one slayer for him.  She pressed toward him, almost touching him, their bodies finding a rhythm. The rhythm. The Buffy-Spike rhythm, their bodies almost meeting at the halfway point, dancing as one, every thrust met, every move anticipated. It was scary and sexy. And he didn't remember this, but his body did.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published on LIveJournal in July 2007 - July 2010.


End file.
